Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

The loveliest moments put both politics and theatrics aside, conveying the strange beauty of a hard life involving little else than fish, water, and gray sky.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Filmmaker Kormákur orchestrates all this with broad strokes and winking intrigue, although the line between hambone melodrama and irony-tinged satire gets walked across a few too many times.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker

For the most part the eruption of repressed anger is blindly destructive. There's little healing to be found in the bitter melodrama, but there is a small sense of triumph as the children face up and move on.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

The film's flamboyant portrayals of characters you love to hate have a malicious comic edge. If ever there were a movie to gladden the hearts of misanthropes, this is it.

Village Voice by Leslie Camhi

Baltasar Kormákur's wacky version of "King Lear," set in an Icelandic village where virtually everyone plays the fool.